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The last two races of MotoGP have been immensely entertaining, especially with Valentino Rossi returning back to his funny ways of celebrating victory. Kunal Ghate explains the series of events at Indy and Misano.

Indianapolis and San Marino have been the most crucial, as they played a major role in teams choosing their future riders. As for the riders who don’t have a job for the 2010 season it was tremendous pressure to perform and make sure they catch each and every teams attention.

Some got to finish the race at a respectable position and got contracts in return, while some like James Toseland and Alex De Angelis are still out of job. They should now target Moto2. Speaking of which, what is Moto2? Read about it here on iSport.in in the coming week.

One reason why I am talking about two races together for the first time is because the riders championship has taken sharp turns from the weekend at Indianapolis and at San Marino. When Casey Stoner will join once again in the next race going to be held in Portugal, things are going to get even more explosive.

Casey Stoner has been MIA for the last three races due to illness, but now Ducati has hopes of gaining position in Constructors Championship with his return, though Casey will have ambition to win every race, little will it help to increase his possibilities of winning the title.

Indianapolis GP:

The track: Resurfaced and reconfigured for the MotoGP weekend, the Indianapolis motor speedway which otherwise is used by the Americans to race their ‘oh so boring Nascar`s’ was definitely not the best track to race on in MotoGP.

Being the US of A, people are just interested in bigger and faster things, even if the things are just going round the same oval nearly about 200 times in a race. Not saying it doesn’t require skill, Montoya wouldn`t have joined it otherwise. The point is we all know the Americans hate sports bikes and sports cars, their idea is to have fast, bulky, shiny, noisy and most difficult to handle cars and bikes. No wonder the grand stands were so empty, one of the reasons why FIA gave the finger to US GP. The Americans just did not promote the sport!

Let us not digress, the track being recently resurfaces was very very abrasive, in some parts though, one of three parts to be precise. There actually were three different kinds of surfaces, making tyre choice extremely critical and demanding different riding styles on each type of asphalt. To make things easy, Bridgestone had brought asymmetrical construction compound tyres to cope up with higher temperature on one side of tyre than the other.

Though the big and famous banked corner was completely bypassed by the new configuration and anti-clock direction, the bikes reached speeds up to 310 km/hr in the qualifying and even during race, making it one of the fastest start-finish straight till now.

Dani Pedrosa: As always, Dani was on the front row at start, Rossi was on pole. But that does not make a difference as Dani can make an electric start on all tracks, and what a blazing start he made. Taking full advantage of the long straight, Dani was in lead and was looking very strong.

Courtesy, his perfect bike setup for the weekend, and the new Showa suspension that he tested and approved at the official Brno test seemed to work perfectly fine.

Dani was doing fine and leading the race for about first six laps, that’s when he made a mistake and went off track. The bike simply refused to switch sides from the slow right hander to a even slower left hand corner, it was a genuine mistake by the Spaniard.

The bike was fine but needed a jumpstart from one the marshals. Dani certainly needs more muscle to be able to life that bike up as soon as possible (trust me these bikes are light as a feather), he must have lost about three position just before he was able to lift the bike up by himself.

Rejoins in last position, but being uninjured and bike still scratch less, Dani was now putting in some serious effort and clocking one of the fastest lap times, faster than the Yamaha M1`s towards the end. It was very unfortunate weekend for him, if not for that fall at least a podium place was guaranteed if not first.

Valentino Rossi & Jorge Lorenzo: The Fiat Yamaha riders were in a battle amongst themselves, as always. Jorge Lorenzo had suffered DNF in the previous two races and hence was looking to bounce back like never before. He managed to be the fastest in Friday practice but lost the pole position to team mate Valentino by the smallest of margin.

During the race, soon after Pedrosa crashed and was busy picking up his bike, both Rossi and Lorenzo`s attention was now on each other and they started ripping their engines as soon as possible. But as I said, Rossi was not comfortable with the bike setup and was a tad slower than his young rival team mate.

It took Lorenzo about two laps to overtake Rossi, after which it would had been the usual battle to the finish line. Then came one of those moments, like the mistake Rossi made in 2006 to give away his title to Nicky Hayden and like the one at Le Mans. Rossi screwed up! Applying too much pressure on front brakes while entering a curve isn’t such a nice idea, ‘tank slap’ while the rear tyre was about 10 cm in the air. Lorenzo unaware (these bikes don’t have side view mirrors :D) of his team mates fall continues to push harder.

Rossi rejoins the race but he just crawled back to the pit lane and parked the bike, took a look at the telemetry and then parked his ass in the motor-home.

Lorenzo went on to take the victory, crossed the line by doing a kilometer long wheelie, climbed the on the track side walls as if Spider-man! But wasn’t he supposed to be Captain America with his special helmet and the shield!

Oh! Did I mention that Nicky Hayden managed to finish third and got the much wanted option of riding the GP10 in 2010 season confirmed.

San Marino GP:

Firstly, I have never seen so many spectators for a MotoGP race, not in Catalunya not even at Mugello. The number of viewers of MotoGP is growing very fast thanks to the spectacular battle the Yamaha boys put up. MotoGP has always been about racing and less about everything else (except for the Paddock girls), unlike F1 where politics and off the track drama keep the fire among the fans alive more than the race itself. Lets face it guys, F1 is getting more and more boring, they should take some learning’s from Dorna and FIM on how to manage the sport and how to leave drama up to the TV series writers.

San Marino, Valentino Rossi`s second home GP, second because his house is literally just 10 km away from the track. You can always expect something funny from the champion on such occasions. And this time he got a new helmet which had the face of donkey on it (the character from movie Shrek)! And why? Because he had screwed up at Indianapolis and was a gesture by Rossi to admit he his mistake to his fans. A 30 year old world champion doing this at his home GP! Fantastic! And we love it.

Some special people attended the race, Mark Webber who drives in Formula 1 for the Red Bull Racing team and the notoriously famous Italian footballer Marco Materazzi. The one responsible for Italy’s  World Cup win.

The MotoGP race: Rossi at San Marino cannot make a mistake even if he is on sedatives and half asleep; it was just impossible for the Italian to finish anywhere lower than first at Misano circuit. But the Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa largely governed the outcome of the race.

Rossi had a perfect Friday session and snatched pole position from Lorenzo and Dani. Though once again Dani did not care about the pole and took the lead at start once again with his lightning quick launch.

Dani kept the lead for quiet some time. Meanwhile the only representative from San Marino, Alex De Angelis was accused for a nasty incident at turn two of lap one. Alex surely wanted to impress his home crowd and impress some team’s to secure a job for 2010 as well, but overtaking at turn two of lap one at full race speed is not the way. He got carried off and forgot about the consequences of ‘speed’ at corners on cold tyres.

So who suffered, Collin Edwards got hit as Alex went on a low side, Collin hit Nicky Hayden’s rear and took him out too. DNF for all three riders. Collin later said, “We are in Italy and we have to deal with dumb Italians.” So true! Collin did not score any points for the first time after 20 MotoGP races in a row, now that’s some record. Hope Alex comes to Portugal with a donkey on his helmet.

Dani eventually gave in to the Rossi’s efforts, after all Rossi couldn’t let this go by. Now Rossi was pulling away, once again showing the true power of the Yamaha M1 and now Lorenzo was just waiting for the right moment to make his pass on Dani. Too late to do so and Rossi would be unreachable and that’s exactly what happened, thanks to Dani`s defensive skills.

Had it not been for Dani, there was quiet a good chance for Jorge to win the race and be 20 points away from Rossi`s championship lead, But instead the lead is now 30 points and makes the title race swing in anyone’s direction among the two.

Rossi finished some seconds ahead of Lorenzo, who was about 4 seconds clear of Pedrosa. Pedrosa was a good 9 seconds ahead teammate Dovizioso.

The Repsol riders are suffering due to multiple reasons, biggest one being that they were riding with old chassis and old engine from 2008 season for the first few races this year, then Honda got in a new engine and chassis in steps, not to forget the endless injuries Dani has been suffering since the winter testing add to that Dovizioso’s first year at a factory team. Had all these things followed the intended course, we would have seen a totally different standings table today.

The 125cc race:

As always, and I totally believe this, the 125cc and 250cc know as the feeder series of MotoGP are way too much more exciting than the 800cc class. Reason being, the bikes are not as powerful and not as heavy, allowing the rider and his style to make all the difference. The teens riding them are very very brave and take risks which the big boys can only dream of taking on their 800cc bikes.

The engines of these 125cc bikes do not produce much power at lower revs, hence have to be kept at the absolute limits at all times. And one such guy who managed to do it in the most spectacular way was Pol Espargaró. Yes, he is the younger brother of Espargaró riding the Pramac bike who by the way managed to run the fifth fastest lap of the race.

Pol Espargaró, leading the race and was being followed by the Italian rider Iannone. The Italian was hungry for Misano victory to impress the crowd but went a little too far and ended up in the gravel trap. Both riders were riding in their best possible way, Pol imposing his rhythm on Iannone till the very last lap and corner, something was bound to go wrong as they were not even tem inches away from each other.

The sad part is, he too Pol Espargaró with him. It was Iannone’s dream to win at Misano which turned into a nightmare just meters away form the finish line on the last lap!!! Pol’s bike was completely damaged and was obviously very upset, he punched Iannone’s bike to express his anger and in return the Italian dumb rider gave a head butt. Strengthening the connection between Italians and head butts.

Eventually Simón takes victory with the most cunning smile on his face. Almost as if he knew it was going to happen, only that the incident took place at the penultimate corner, was like icing on the cake!

At the parc ferme, Vale’s Yamaha mechanics were wearing the donkey ears and then Rossi joined them too. Rossi joined the mechanics soon after getting off the bike. So who is the real donkey after the San Marino race?

Rossi definitely is not since he was flawless and had a very clean victory, then Iannone or Alex De Angelis? Well the title ‘Donkey of the race’ goes to Alex De Angelis as he managed to screw up his race and two other riders as well, at his home race. But then such is racing and one has to deal with it, sadly Nicky has been involved in two such incidences now, once in Japan thanks to Japanese rookie rider Yuki who was nicely sacked within a couple of races, and now at San Marino.

Congratulations Alex!

The championship, as of now looks to be in Rossi’s bag. But considering the competitive pace of Lorenzo and the continuously developing Repsol Honda and Dani’s performance, things may just tip over into the Spaniards favour.

There are five more rounds remaining that means a maximum of 100 points to be gained by any one rider, with Stoner back in action from Portugal and now Dani becoming third in the contention, the title still is any ones to snatch, even if theoretically. If Lorenzo finishes first in all the races and if Rossi does not finish second in all of them, Lorenzo quiet possibly can become the biggest star of MotoGP.

World Championship Standings:

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publisher said:

	... Doctor!! Way to go!
	report abuse vote down vote up

September 15, 2009
Votes: +0

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